Make the time

To swing by the Distric of Columbia Arts Center in DC and see Ian and Jan: The Undiscovered Duo, A Secret History of the Washington Body School, featuring Jeffry Cudlin and Meg Mitchell.

In the video, Cudlin and Mitchell stage an art historical intervention, weaving an alternative history for Washington art. Cudlin and Mitchell mount a retrospective for their alter egos, Ian and Jan — a fictitious husband-and-wife performance art duo.

According to the exhibition’s premise, "Ian and Jan led the Washington Body School , a group that, in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, exhibited their body art alongside the work of prominent Washington abstract painters.

Ian and Jan: The Washington Body School provides humorous commentary on Washington ’s cultural legacy, on revisionist art historical agendas, and on gender bias and power politics in the arts. The show includes photographs, drawings, props, and videos of the couple in action."

Through June 3, 2007.

New addition

I swung by the IV Annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival yesterday for a little bit and picked up two works of art - one is a gift and one will be a new addition to the collection.

There are some suberb artists out there as well as some really high end crafts. The festival goes through 5PM today.

Consultants

Why some art collectors hire consultants... read it here.

A Lesson?

There's a lesson to be learned here.

Wanna go to an opening in DC tomorrow?

Opening this Saturday, May 12, 2007 in a couple of DC art venues: "Big in Japan," a cross-town collaborative exhibition between Transformer and Shigeko Bork Mu Project.

Opening Receptions: Transformer - Saturday, May 12, 7 to 9 pm and Shigeko Bork Mu Project - Saturday, May 12, 5 to 8 pm.

Exploring the duality in Japanese art today, Transformer is partnering with Shigeko Bork Mu Project to present "Big in Japan" a cross-town collaborative exhibition featuring a diverse array of contemporary Japanese artists who interpret and respond to the tradition and popular culture of Japan.

Transformer has Not Only A, But Also B - featuring work by Aki Goto, Misaki Kawai, Chikara Matsumoto, Kazuyuki Takezaki, and Soju Tao, each channeling the tensions affecting a new generation of contemporary artists in Japan. Not only A, But Also B is guest-curated by Atsuko Ninagawa.

Shigeko Bork Mu ProjectMeditation Rooms featuring Yumi Kori and Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, whose works uniquely incorporate ancient Japanese tradition and contemporary culture.

Visits

April was a record-breaking month for Mid Atlantic Art News with nearly 80,000 visits, which by many politico blogs standards is piddly numbers, but for a visual arts blog dedicated generally to a specific region is pretty good (I think), and further makes me think that we're doing something right.

Thank you and keep 'em coming!

Newhall on Sam Gilliam and "Post Painterly Abstraction"

The Inky's Edith Newhall reviews "Post Painterly Abstraction" at Locks Gallery, and also DC's Sam Gilliam at Sande Webster Gallery.

Read her review here.

Wanna go to a Baltimore opening tomorrow?

Touchet Gallery has an opening tomorrow, Friday, May 11, for their new erotic art exhibition which is titled "Uninhibited."

The exhibit features the works of Austin artist Ray Donley, Larry Scott, the Baltimore City Paper’s 2005 Best Visual Artist and Philly sculptor Christopher Smith.

Opening reception: May 11, 6-9pm and then there's an after-party at Koopers Tavern in Fells Point.

Wanna go to a DC area opening tomorrow?

"Trio: three artists, one show" featuring work by Azeb Zekiros, Amy Kincaid, Kendra Denny and running May 11 — May 31, 2007 has an opening reception on Friday, May 11, 6:30 to 9:00 pm at Artful Gallery located at 1349 Maryland Ave, NE, Washington, DC 20002.

Also of note, at Touchstone Gallery in the District, Ellyn Weiss and Rima Schulkind have an opening on Friday, May 11th from 6:00 to 8:30 pm.

Or you can also swing by Bethesda and do the Art Walk (or take the free mini bus ride) and see about a dozen openings and shows in one walk-through. Details here. There's also a free guided tour that starts at 6:30PM - Details here.

Mark your calendar

There's a ton of art events happening this weekend, but certainly one not to miss and taking place on the Bethesda streets is the IV Annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival. Nearly 130 artists from all over the country, music and food.

This really cool (and free) outdoors fine arts event will take place on Auburn and Norfolk Avenues in the Woodmont Triange of Bethesda, MD. The event is located six blocks from the Bethesda Metro station and is near several public parking garages where visitors can park for free on Saturdays and Sundays. Last year around 40,000 of your fellow Washingtonians and suburbian kinfolk showed up and bought a ton of artwork, so make plans to visit the fair.

Artists, restaurants, directions, details and photos here. Saturday, May 12 - 10am-6pm and Sunday, May 13 - 10am-5pm.

Go and buy some art!

Wanna go to some Philly openings tomorrow?

Friday is the city's ever growing Second Fridays gallery openings and extended hours. Swing by Seeber Fine Arts for recent paintings and drawings by Rachel Bomze. Opening is from 5-9PM.

The Sun on Probst

It tells you something about DC's daily newspapers when an out-of-town newspaper has better coverage of an exceptional DC gallery show than the local daily rags.

Granted, the Sun's art critic Glenn McNatt is also a photographer and thus has a deep interest in photography shows. His review of Barbara Probst at G Fine Arts in DC is good, but it also makes us sigh because it is rare when a DC-based newspaper gives the same kind of attention to a local DC gallery that McNatt gives G Fine Art's superb exhibition.

And granted, I suspect that Baltimore galleries probably get a little ticked off when their hometown paper's chief art critic goes to another city to review a gallery show.

But the point is that a DC gallery show attracts the attention of a critic from another city's major newspaper while it is essentially ignored by DC's own comatose daily newsmedia.

Good thing we have the CP.

No Representation at Warehouse

Closing this Saturday, May 12 Just extended through June 9, 2007 is one of those shows that makes the Warehouse Galleries and Theatre complex such a key member of the DC art scene.

Curated by Molly Ruppert, Sondra Arkin, Ellyn Weiss and Philippa P.B. Hughes, "No Representation" is as close as any show can come to deliver a powerful mini survey of DC area artists working the abstract genre of art.

Spread through three of the Warehouse's warren of art spaces, the exhibition is a treat to the eyes in its successes and a quick glance in its failures. It is also next to the two galleries hosting the "Supple" exhibition, as by now everyone in the DC area knows that the Warehouse came to the rescue of that show when its initial venue backed out at the last minute.

The unexpected juxtapositioning of "Supple" and "No Representation" works for me. In fact, had there not been a sign declaring the name difference between the two shows, I'd challenge anyone not to flow from gallery to gallery and not think that it was not a single show.

But I digress; back to "No Representation."

I've been following the work of Rex Weil for many years, usually through his inclusion in many of the old Gallery K's shows. For the most part I've always remained distant and mostly uninterested in Weil's works.

Until this show.

His piece "Black Stars a/k/a You Are Here" (oil and enamel on wood and a steal at $2,500) finally grabbed my attention. "The dark areas take out all the romance out of this beautiful painting," said the woman who was in the gallery looking at the work, almost hypnotized by it.


They do. Weil's work is a visceral work that enters that realm where the eyes can't stop examining and wandering all over it many surfaces, spills, finger tracks, accidents. And the black areas that so attracted the visitor purposefully work to herd the composition and sidetrack and bend the viewing in a way that they do erase the beauty out of the painting and in an unexpected way make it more sophisticated and bleak and ultimately one of the most successful abstract works that I have seen in a long time.

I also liked Anita Walsh's "Living Drawing 5x5" (rubber, birch and brass on plywood), and Andres Tremols' "Untitled Blue Form" (archival digital print on paper), a gorgeous work where beauty works like it is supposed to, in a blazing display of Tremols' logical progression from working in glass to taking the glass imagery to a two dimensional plane.



Finally, in the Cafe gallery, the stand-out piece by far was Janis Goodman's "Wedge, Low Tide" (graphite on paper). As most of you know, I have a particular soft spot for good drawings, and this piece exemplifies all that is good about drawing, especially when executed in the hands of a talented artist. In fact, more often than not, dig a little into the record of a bad painter, and you'll find an artist with minimal drawing skills.


But Goodman flexes her artistic muscles in this drawing, showing the sensuality of the simplest of art materials - graphite and paper - to deliver a complex and elegant composition that is organic and somehow sexual, perhaps like the after results of a wet, lapping ocean.

Other stand-outs in the show were the deceptively complex text rearrangements of Mark Cameron Boyd, the mixed media pieces of Pat Goslee, and many others.

The last day to see "No Representation" is May 12 June 9, 2007.

Salary Parity for Anne d'Harnoncourt

Let me join in Lee Rosenbaum's call for salary parity for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's able Director and Chief Executive Officer Anne d'Harnoncourt.

CultureGrrl points out that on page 13 of the current issue of The Art Newspaper, you can read the results of their 2006 international survey of salaries for museum directors, and according to Rosenbaum, it appears that d'Harnoncourt's compensation is among the lowest in her peer group of US museum art directors.

Time for the PMA trustees to consider why and then fix it.

Who done did doe'd it?

The WaPo's Reliable Source columnists tell us about a $10,000 art kidnapping.

Read it here.

Now they've done it

In what surely must be a new level of barbarity, Hamas is now employing a Mickey Mouse rip-off to convince little children to become suicide bombers.

As artists and other folks know well, the forces of the Disneyan Empire do not take lightly to such copyright violations, and I am sure that the sickos of Hamas who thought up this disgusting idea will soon discoverer that whatever you do in life, you don't fuck with The Mouse.

Ask the Ombudsman

Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's Ombudsman will be answering questions about the WaPo tomorrow, Wednesday, May 9, 2007 starting at 11:00 AM. You can ask her questions here, either live or ahead of time.

This is a good opportunity for anyone so inclined to contact Ms. Howell and express the dismay that we all feel about the Washington Post's Style section spectacular apathy towards the DC area visual arts scene outside of our great DC area museums. Please be courteous.

Fact: When Eugene Robinson took over as editor of Style, he inherited a section that had a weekly column dedicated to art galleries (the "Galleries" column) and a second weekly column (the Arts Beat column) which was focused mostly on the visual arts and on arts news. Under Mr. Robinson, the Arts Beat column was reduced to twice a month, and refocused on all the arts (most of which already get decent coverage in Style).

Fact: Eugene Robinson also began the process to let Blake Gopnik get away with only reviewing (with one or two very rare exceptions) museums, thus having the nation's only art critic too good to review his city's artists and art galleries.

Fact: On July 6, 2006, Steve Reiss (the Style section's Asst. Editor) stated online: "As for Blake Gopnik, he is a prolific writer and I find it hard to argue that we should be giving up reviews of major museum shows so he can write more about galleries that have a much smaller audience."

Fact: When Robinson left, under Deborah Heard, the coverage got even worse, with "Galleries" being reduced to twice a month. That adds up to around 25 columns a year to review the thousand or so gallery shows that the DC area gallery art scene has to offer.

Fact: On March 15, 2005, Deborah Heard was online and someone asked her:

Washington, D.C.: When are gallery reviews going to start running every week again? Are you currently seeking a new freelance galleries critic?

Deborah E. Heard: Reassessing our coverage of art galleries is on my list of things to do. I've already heard from quite a few folks about this so I know it's a pressing issue for some. But give me some time; I've only been in the job for a few months.

Memo to Ms. Heard: It has been two years. When are you going to reassess the Style section's gallery coverage so that it is at least on a par with the Style section's coverage of theatre, music, dance, opera, etc.?

Want some free artwork?

(Via AJ)

"An original work by artists and national treasures Gilbert and George would normally set you back many thousands of pounds. But from 11.30pm tonight a piece is being made available to anyone who wants it - for free.

The work, called Planed, can be downloaded from the Guardian and BBC websites from 11.30pm, for 48 hours only. It will be the first time that artists of this stature have made work available in this way."

Planed will be available to download at this BBC website and also at this Guardian website starting at 11:30PM British time, which I think is 6:30PM EST.

Reminds me a little of what David Hockney did a long time ago when he included a free litho titled "A Bounce for Bradford" as the centerfold in a British newspaper. That freebie now sells for around $400.

What G&G are doing, of course, is the next techno-dash-logical step.

It also leads me think: how far away are we from the point where some enterprising museum and a techie curator get together to put together an exhibition where visitors can view an original work of art by blue chip artists who don't need the bucks anymore, and the visitors can also then receive a free CD of the work (or purchase it for a nominal amount), which then they can take home or to Kinko's and print it on good paper and frame it and have a museum quality reproduction on good paper hanging at home.

An earlier version of this last idea is when a while back the Hirshhorn had a stack of a Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece printed on heavy stock paper which visitors could then take home for free. You don't want to know in how many DC area homes I have seen this Felix Gonzalez-Torres work nicely framed.

Mark your calendar

On May 12, go see "Underwater", an experimental art show at 1520 14th St NW, in Washington DC. It's being offered by Project Seduce & Destroy, a collective of creative artists featured in the show.

The event promises "experience the intimate otherworld of organic electronica sound and visual art at live."

Click here to RSVP.